Celluloid of the Rising Sun

From lesbian trysts to memories of Manchuria, this film festival will surprise you.

SEVENTH JAPANESE FILM FESTIVALDendy Opera Quays, 2 East Circular Quay Wednesday to November 28Tickets start at $7 a sessionBookings: 9247 3800More information http://www.jpf.org.au

Kaze Shindo's debut feature is the sort of film that would shock your grandparents - Love/Juice is the story of two young women dipping their toes into lesbianism.

Fortunately, her grandfather is the respected filmmaker Kaneto Shindo, who has written more than 250 scripts and directed 47 films since 1951.

"When I saw it, I thought young people are making interesting films," says Kaneto. "She made this film as a 22-year-old, and this film matches her age. This film is about the love between two women, and I thought it was familiar to her generation.

"I thought it was very good, quite refreshing. I thought it depicted my granddaughter's life."

The film won Kaze the best new director award at the 2001 Berlin International Film Festival and is showing this week at the seventh Japanese Film Festival. It's about as far removed in style and substance from Hollywood as Zushi City, Kaze's home, which is about an hour from Tokyo.

Kaze's influences are as non-Hollywood as her address.

"Speaking of my favourite directors is very difficult - there are so many," she says through an interpreter.

"Of my contemporaries, I like Ryuichi Hiroki [the director of I Am An S+M Writer and Vibrator]. He is about 50, but I feel there is quite a lot of similarity.

"And I think Fellini would be one of my very favourite. He made such fantastic work, and tried various techniques."

After the interpreter finishes speaking, Kaze jumps back in.

"Oh, and I almost forgot - I have to say the director I admire the most is my grandfather."

Kaneto's latest directorial effort (number 47), The Owl, which he completed this year, at the impressive age of 91, is also screening at the film festival.

"Yes, I have been making films for many, many years with a great deal of passion," Kaneto says.

"That's why it has been so many years: my passion for filmmaking hasn't changed at all."

Kaneto's unusual thriller/comedy/drama is the story of two women in a remote ghost town in northern Japan. Destitute and abandoned, they start using sex and pesticide as lethal weapons.

It's dark and funny, and Kaneto says he wrote The Owl as a kind of letter of complaint to the Japanese government about its mishandling of the people it had persuaded to settle in Manchuria.

"I don't think this is typical, even among Japanese films," says Kaneto. "I would say this is very new, for me as well, to blend all these genres."

The Owl was produced by Kaze's father and Kaneto's son, Jiro Shindo. Kaze and Jiro will be in Australia to launch the festival on Tuesday night. They will join Australian directors and producers for a free seminar on the work of Shindo and perspectives of independent filmmaking in Japan, on Thursday at 5pm.

"My kind of family is not really so rare in Japan these days," says Kaze, who turned 27 yesterday. "In the past, the young tended to want to be away from their families and do their own thing. But in recent times, more younger people are following in the footsteps of their family.

"As a young person, I visited sets, and the people there really seemed to be enjoying what they were doing. So I always felt like a horse with a carrot dangling in front of me.

"I even remember visiting the set when my grandfather was making The Horizon [1984]. That was before I even went to primary school. In fact, my grandfather used to take me to the set at least once each time he worked on a new film."

Says Kaneto: "This granddaughter has always been interested in filmmaking. In our family, we talk a lot about films and filmmaking, so to her those are quite familiar things. She went to a specialist school for filmmaking, then she wrote the script herself, and directed it. But while she was making it,

I didn't visit her. I didn't want to interfere."

The festival will also screen the Oscar-winning animated hit Spirited Away and the comedy Waterboys, plus two classics: The Island (1960), also directed by Kaneto, and Twenty-Four Eyes (1954).

Kaneto's 50 years of experience gives him an informed perspective on the state of Japanese filmmaking.

"With the advent of television, the movie industry has been pushed aside and depressed," he says. "This was a worldwide phenomenon, and many of the film studios went bankrupt one after another. So the industry went down a lot, and their spirit went down, too.

"However, there is now a young generation that's passionate about filmmaking, and independent filmmakers have become much more active. So I would say the industry is getting stronger.

"We have a word in Japan, 'kukuro', which means heart, or mind, or spirit. Depicting kukuro is the mission of filmmakers, I think. If that is forgotten, movie-making faces its end. That's what I've been emphasising in my filmmaking."